LUXEMBOURG CITY — Admitting that traffic has not improved much despite the tram, Mayor Lydie Polfer says it might be time to start using the 26-station underground rail network that was built under the city in the late 1990s.
“It’s been there for ages,” she said to an aide on Monday while the two were stuck in traffic. “It’s just a matter of switching it on.”
VDL officials originally planned on opening the Metro on January 1, 2000, but one thing led to another, they say, and they simply forgot.
“There was that all that panic about the Y2K bug, plus we thought it would be prudent to wait until we recovered from the once-in-a-millennium hangovers we were all suffering from,” said VDL engineer Fernand Theisen.
Angelo Martins, one of dozens of Luxembourg City Metro drivers who have been hanging out in an underground office with little to do since then, says he’s looking forward to dusting off the tracks and finally seeing some action.
“It’s all there, so we might as well use it,” he said. “Almost 58 kilometers of tracks crisscrossing the capital, providing a way to get from the airport to the Fischer in Gasperich in under five minutes.”
“I hope the wheels aren’t rusty,” he added. “And we should probably make sure the brakes still work.”
